Upright cleaners typically have a rolling head assembly, which carries a fixed cleaner head in plane-parallel contact with the floor surface. This head assembly is mounted on a reclining ‘upright’ body which carries a handle at its upper end. In the conventional floor-cleaning mode, a user reclines the ‘upright’ body until the handle is at a convenient height, and then uses the handle manually to push the cleaner across the floor, maintaining the cleaner head in plane parallel contact with the floor surface.
It is often desirable to vacuum-clean above the level of a floor. For example, it may be desirable to vacuum-clean shelving, stairs or the upper corners of a room. It is usually completely impractical to use the main cleaner head for this purpose: the cleaner will almost certainly be too heavy and cumbersome, and the cleaner head itself too large.
Instead, many modern upright vacuum cleaners are provided with a suction wand which connects to the main separating apparatus onboard the vacuum cleaner via a flexible hose. This wand and hose assembly allows the upright vacuum cleaner to be operated, as required, in the manner of a cylinder (or “canister”) vacuum cleaner—making “above the floor cleaning” much more practical.
For convenience, the wand is normally stored on-board the vacuum cleaner. FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate one example of this sort of arrangement, as used on the DC14 and DC15 models of Dyson upright vacuum cleaner. Here, the wand 1 is connected to the hose 3 via the main handle 5 on the cleaner 7, which releases with the wand 1 so that it can double-up as a wand handle when the wand 1 is being used (FIG. 2). The handle 5 is fixed to the upper end of the hose 3, but telescopically receives the wand 1 so that the wand 1 can be fully extended in use and then subsequently retracted inside the hose 3 for compact storage on the cleaner 7. A manual-release catch 9 secures the handle 5 to the cleaner 7 until such time as it is required to use the wand 1.